Turkey represents 34.6 percent of all pending cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), with 21,200 applications awaiting judgment, according to newly released data from the Strasbourg-based court.
The figure places Turkey far ahead of Russia, which has 8,200 unresolved applications, and underscores the growing backlog of rights complaints tied to Ankara’s prolonged crackdown on dissent.
Rights advocates say the numbers reflect years of escalating repression, institutional erosion and politically motivated prosecutions under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Since a coup attempt in 2016, Turkey has undergone a sweeping transformation. The government has dismissed over 130,000 civil servants, arrested tens of thousands of people and severely curtailed freedom of expression and judicial independence. Many of the targeted individuals were accused of ties to the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, while others included opposition politicians, Kurdish dissidents, journalists and civil society leaders.
Legal experts and international observers say these actions have effectively criminalized dissent and overwhelmed the country’s judiciary, leading to a surge in appeals to international courts.
President Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began pursuing its followers. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following the abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The ECtHR has issued several landmark rulings against Turkey in recent years. In the cases of Selahattin Demirtaş, the imprisoned former leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and Osman Kavala, a philanthropist and rights advocate, the court found multiple violations of the rights to liberty, expression and a fair trial. Both detentions were deemed politically motivated.
Turkey has refused to comply with the rulings, prompting the Council of Europe to launch infringement proceedings, a rare punitive mechanism reserved for persistent non-compliance.
A significant portion of Turkey’s ECtHR caseload concerns prosecutions of individuals linked to the Gülen movement. In Yüksel Yalçınkaya v. Turkey, the court’s Grand Chamber ruled that Turkey had systematically violated the applicant’s rights to a fair trial enshrined in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), no punishment without law (Article 7) and freedom of association (Article 11). The case drew attention to Turkey’s reliance on digital data, particularly the ByLock messaging app, as decisive evidence in terrorism-related trials, often without examining individual actions or intent.
ByLock, once widely available online, has been considered a secret tool of communication among supporters of the movement since the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
The court described the practice as part of a broader, systemic failure that could impact tens of thousands of defendants. More than 8,500 similar applications are currently pending. The ECtHR called on Turkey to implement structural legal reforms to prevent further violations and align its judiciary with European human rights standards.
Despite the ruling, Turkish courts continue to rely on similar forms of digital evidence, and no major reforms have been enacted.
Turkey’s democratic decline has also extended to media freedom, judicial independence and civil society. The country remains one of the world’s top jailers of journalists. Emergency powers introduced after the coup, though officially lifted in 2018, continue under new legal frameworks that enable prolonged detentions, media bans and restrictions on political speech.
